BIVDA Press Releases

NICE launches HealthTech Connect

NICE has formally launched HealthTech Connect, a new online resource to help identify and support new health technologies as they move from inception to adoption in the UK health and care system.

What is HealthTech Connect?

HealthTech Connect is a secure online system for identifying and supporting health technologies (including devices, diagnostics, and digital) as they move from inception to adoption in the UK health and care system.

It is intended for health technologies that:

Offer benefits to patients or healthcare professionals compared to those already offered by current practice, or

Provide a system or resource benefit to the UK health and care system compared to those already offered by current practice.

It is not intended to be an extensive catalogue of all available health technologies. Instead, it aims to identify and support health technologies that offer novel benefits (that is, benefits which are not already provided by technologies in use in the UK health and care system). Data for health technologies that do not offer novel benefits compared with existing technologies should not be entered on HealthTech Connect.

HealthTech Connect has been developed to reduce the duplication and complexity involved in getting a health technology developed and adopted in the UK. It will be a clear and simple point of entry for health technology to access support and national evaluation programmes.

It will help national organisations that support the development of health technologies, or that have a responsibility for issuing guidance, advice and policies about health technologies to better identify them. This will enable timely support to be offered and will help the UK health and care system to better plan for the introduction and adoption of health technologies (for example by reconfiguring services, or enabling reimbursement). This will enable quicker, better-informed decision making by the UK health and care system.

Companies (health technology developers or those working on behalf of a health technology developer) will visit HealthTechConnect.org.uk and register to use the system. They will enter and update information about their technology as it develops. It will be free of charge for companies to use.

The system will help companies to understand what information is needed by decision makers in the UK health and care system (such as levels of evidence), and clarify possible routes to market access.

The information entered will be used to identify if the technology is suitable for consideration by an organisation that offers support to health technology developers (for example with funding, technology development, evidence generation, market access, reimbursement, adoption).

It will also be used to identify if the technology is suitable for consideration for evaluation by a UK health technology assessment programme.

Technologies that are suitable for support or evaluation will be able to access it through HealthTech Connect. This will avoid the need for companies to provide similar, separate information about the technology to the organisation or programme.

Who will have access to the information entered into HealthTech Connect?

The following Data Accessors will have access to access to all records in the system, and data that has been submitted cannot be hidden from them:

The following Data Accessors do not have access to data submitted to the system unless the Data Inputter gives access. The Data Inputter can choose which Data Accessors to grant access to and change these preferences at any time using the 'sharing' feature in HealthTech Connect: